Reviews

Squeeze This!

May 17, 2012

I know it’s hard to believe, but even history bloggers sometimes think about something other than history.  We knit, canoe, wrestle bears, feed people, drink whiskey, and play with the cat.* Whenever we get the chance, My Own True Love and I pull on our dancing shoes and two-step and waltz to a Cajun band. [...]

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Stranger Magic

May 8, 2012

I’m fascinated by the Arabian Nights. By the stories themselves and the way they fit together into their complicated frame story. By their transformation from Arabic street tales to a established position in the Western canon.* By their echoes in Western culture, from the Romantic poets to Disney. So I was delighted to get a [...]

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City of Fortune

April 26, 2012

I thought I knew something about Venice. A floating city carved out of a malaria-ridden lagoon.  Merchant city-state turned maritime empire, with one foot in the Muslim world.  The European end of the desert caravan trade, with merchant entrepôts throughout the Levantine coast.  Canals, gondoliers,  masked balls, gold ducats. Glamor, wealth, decadence, decay.  Or perhaps, [...]

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The Lost History of 1914

April 23, 2012

Anyone who’s been following along on this blog knows that, like most history people, I have events and periods that I return to over and over again. Some I’ve followed for years; others are relatively new interests.  One of the constants in my historical life is the First World War.*  It’s always a pleasure to [...]

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History on Display: Elizabeth Rex

December 20, 2011

If you’re in Chicago between now and January 22, or are close enough that you can get here with no difficulty, I strongly recommend you get tickets to Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of Elizabeth Rex  by Canadian playwright Timothy Findley. * Findley builds his story on three historical facts: The Earl of Essex, a court [...]

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The Beauty and the Sorrow

November 22, 2011

. Over the course of the year, I read a lot of history. Some books I mine for facts. Some grab me with the story. And now and then a work of history simply blows me away. The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Swedish historian and war [...]

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The Great Sea

October 25, 2011

As so often happens when I pick up a history book, I was recently whacked over the head by a factoid that was both obvious and illuminating: the name Mediterranean literally means “the sea between the lands”. It’s a good name, but it’s by no means the only name that sea has gone by. The [...]

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History on Display: Windows on the War

September 27, 2011

There are plenty of good reasons to visit the Art Institute of Chicago:  the Impressionist collection, the Chagall window, the under-appreciated collection of South Asia art, the gift shop.  But the Art Institute usually isn’t my first choice for a history lesson.  In fact, it doesn’t generally take much to set me off on the [...]

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Who made the map of the modern Middle East?

September 23, 2011

The simple answer is:  Great Britain.  You want the long version? In The Makers of the Modern Middle East   historians T.G. Fraser, Andrew Mango, and Robert McNamara tell the story of how today’s Middle East was created from the remains of the Ottoman Empire during the peace negotiations at the end of the First World [...]

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A Crusade by Any Other Name….

September 8, 2011

Sometimes the name you give to an historical event says a lot about where you stand in relation to that event.  Is it the Civil War, or the War of Northern Aggression?   The Sepoy Rebellion, the first Indian war of independence, or (my personal choice) the violence of 1857? Other times, what you call an [...]

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